Author(s)

Vinod Verma^1*, Ashish Mehta², Sanjay Pal¹, Manoj Kumar³, Birbal Singh⁴, Ashok Kumar⁵, Sanjeev Gautam⁶

¹Centre of Biotechnology, Nehru Science Complex, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, India.
²National Heart Research Institute Singapore, National Heart Centre, Singapore.
³Department of Microbiology & Immunology, National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, India.
⁴Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Regional Station, Palampur, India.
⁵Department of Zoology, MLK Post Graduate College, Balrampur, India.
⁶Department of Biotechnology, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, India.

Treatments to repair the human heart following regenerative diseases remain a challenge for medical science. Unlike lower vertebrate species the human heart lacks a regenerative pathway meaning that research has to be focused on cell transplantation. Porcines (Sus scrofa) are excellent models for cardiovascular disease and pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) generated from porcines will provide important clinical insights for cardiac cell therapy. This could open a new avenue of research into degenerative conditions as porcine is a more effective human proxy to work with. However, bona fide PSCs are currently available onlyin rodents (mouse, rat) and primates (monkey, human). Attempts to derivepluripotent stem cells (PSCs) from porcine have been going on for more than two decades with slow progress. Despite the fact that the porcine stem cells are under increasing glare of publicity due to milestone achievements in this area of research. Advances in stem cell technology, especially the genetic engineering, innovative cell culturing and induced pluripotency to generate stem cells has dramatically revolutionized the basic and applied investigations and applications of porcine stem cells. This review attempts to summarize the major signaling pathways involved in maintenance of pluripotency and the state of the art conceptual and technical progress for generating bona fide porcine PSCs.

Porcine Model, Signaling Pathways, Stem Cells, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, Pluripotency, Regenerative Medicine, Cell Therapy, Epigenetics

Verma, V. , Mehta, A. , Pal, S. , Kumar, M. , Singh, B. , Kumar, A. and Gautam, S. (2014) In Pursuit of Porcine Pluripotent Stem Cells for Autologous Cell Therapy. Stem Cell Discovery, 4, 107-124. doi: 10.4236/scd.2014.44012.